The UiPath Robot Guide

Welcome to the UiPath Robot guide. You'll find comprehensive information about Robot to help you get started as quickly as possible. Links to the other UiPath Platform guides are available above.Change the documentation version from the left drop-down list. If you think something can be improved, feel free to suggest edits.Please keep in mind that the documentation for each major version also contains all minor versions that may appear. For example, the v2017.1 guides contain all updates brought by SP 1.Lastly, may the search be with you!

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About Automation Projects on the Robot

The Robot is an execution agent, meaning that you have to provide it with the automation projects you want it to run.

After creating an automation project in Studio, it needs to be published locally or to Orchestrator. Once a project is published, you can send it to the Robot machine and start executing it.

On the Robot machine, the automation packages feed is provided as the value of the NuGetServerUrl parameter, in the UiPath.Settings file (%ProgramData%\UiPath). This is populated by default as follows:

When NOT connected to Orchestrator - %ProgramData%\UiPath\Packages

When connected to Orchestrator - the default Orchestrator feed (~/NuGetPackages)Please note that these values can be customized to suit your needs.

The Robot uses the feed which responds the fastest, whether or not it's connected to Orchestrator.

Important:

As of 2018.2, you should specify a Project.json file when running your project from the UiRobot.exe (command line) client. Running .xaml files is still supported, but the workflow must be inside of a project folder.

Automation Projects when Connected to Orchestrator

While connected to Orchestrator, the UiPath Robot tray displays all the automation projects the given Robot has been associated with.

Robots that are connected to Orchestrator still need to download and unzip the automation packages locally to execute them. Consequently, when you deploy a package to an environment (create a process) in Orchestrator, it is automatically installed on all the Robot machines from the indicated environment, in the %USERPROFILE%\.nuget\Packages folder.

If for some reason an automation project is no longer available locally, it is marked with the update icon in the UiPath Robot tray. When you click this button, the package is downloaded and unzipped in the %USERPROFILE%\.nuget\Packages folder.

Note:

If the automation project is not available locally when you start a job in Orchestrator, it automatically downloads it in the %USERPROFILE%\.nuget\Packages folder and all other dependencies (activities), and then starts the execution.

Automation Projects when Not Connected to Orchestrator

The UiPath Robot tray displays, in the Available Processes section, the automation projects that are stored as follows:

in both the %ProgramData%\UiPath\Packages and %USERPROFILE%\.nuget\Packages folders

only in the %ProgramData%\UiPath\Packages directory. These items are marked with the update icon. Clicking this button unzips the process in the %USERPROFILE%\.nuget\Packages folder.

Only automation projects that are present in the %ProgramData%\UiPath\Packages folder and decompressed in the %USERPROFILE%\.nuget\Packages folder can be executed directly.

Note:

The %ProgramData%\UiPath\Packages folder is created when you first publish an automation project from Studio. If you are not connected to either Studio nor Orchestrator, you have to create this folder.The %USERPROFILE%\.nuget\Packages directory is created when you decompress the first automation package.

Security Project Considerations

Standard users are prevented from reading and/or writing workflows (*.xaml files) of installed projects. This feature applies to 2018.1.1 Robot instances where the Robot was installed as a service.

The NuGet packages of projects are downloaded and installed by the Robot Service, as previously mentioned. They are protected in the following manner:

A folder for the package about to be installed is created, in the <ProjectName>\<Version> format, in the %USERPROFILE%\.nuget\Packages directory.

The following security measures are taken for the aforementioned directory:

Permission inheritance is disabled and all permissions are cleared;

Full control is granted to the Local System account and Built-in Administrators; This means that standard users can no longer list, read or write files in the %USERPROFILE%\.nuget\Packages folder.

The package is downloaded and extracted in this directory, using the NuGet package manager, under the Local System account.

All the temporary generated files are also secured.

For each workflow file (*.xaml) present in the secure folder (including subfolders), permission inheritance is disabled and all permissions are cleared.

Full control over these files is granted to the Local System account and Built-in Administrators.

For the %USERPROFILE%\.nuget\Packages\<ProjectName>\<Version> folder, the inheritance is enabled. The permissions for the %USERPROFILE%\.nuget\Packages\<ProjectName>\<Version> directory are now the same as those for the parent directory, %USERPROFILE%.

Important!

Access to workflow files (*.xaml) remains protected since the permissions for these were explicitly set without inheritance at step 5. Access to other files in the project folder is granted to standard users.